/sci/ - Science & Math

Can we talk about precognition for a moment /sci/?

I realize that the scientific community rejects the very idea of it, but for the sake of argument, let's assume that people occasionally can perceive future events in their dreams, and that it's not a phenomenon based on logic and the work of their subconcious, but true ESP.
A very crude example would be a person predicting a train catastrophe, 2 months in advance. The twist is that they haven't yet recieved the call from their relatives that would invite them to a wedding that day, thus setting the events in motion.

So how could this be possible theoretically? Which laws of nature would this phenomenon violate?

I'm fairly new to the scientific process (I'm currently working on a degree in mathematics, but I've taken a lot of physics classes, as well.) and I've been doing a bit of preliminary reasearch on the scientific process. Now I've been told that there are multiple scientific processes, and that they each had a specific set of circumstances in which they are exclusively appropriate; but I've always been told (up to this point) that the scientific process has been an algorithm:

1. Identify problem
2. Research
3. Formulate hypothesis
4. Test hypothesis
5. Analyze data
6. Draw Conclusion

I've tried to research this, but I don't really know where to go.
Has anyone else ever heard of alternative scientific methods? Is there a place I can go to learn more about them, if they exist?

So there's this moving point charge, +q, and I gotta prove that the general formula for the magnetic field, B=[(u_0)qv]/(4piR^2) can be derived from Ampere's law, being that the surface integral of B*dl = (u_0)(i_c + [epsilon naught](d(phi_E)/dt)).

What do? Ive tried basic relations between values, and have come up with "close, but not quite" answers. Im pretty much convinced that the process involves a lot of complicated integration, and don't know where to begin.

>>5915035
No. By saying that the red line starts here and ends there, you're saying that there is a beginning and an end to red line, thus it does not have an infinite length. This diagram is also poorly defined.

What shape would a superfluid assume in freefall/zero gravity environment?

>>5883484
yeah do it
you can find work in any country in the world with globally competitive pay in almost every country.

I'm going into my third semester of college now. I just finished Single-Variable calculus, and next semester I'm taking Multivariable and Linear Algebra. Am I too babby-tier to start learning about other things yet, or are there still some areas I can start to learn before I actually take the class on them? The sticky has a list of subjects, but not much else.

>>5783735
If we were going to start a trend like this why bother keeping it on /sci/.?

The majority of people who come to /sci/ are the regulars, who by and large already know a fair bit of science or are intelligent enough to have things explained to them at a higher level... or trolls who don't fucking care.

The people who lie somewhere in the middle aren't coming to /sci/ (at least not yet or in large numbers), they're on other boards.

If the idea is to encourage /sci/ posters to be able to explain scientific concepts to the everyman, why not start posting science Q&As on other boards?

We've already got that guy Space Elevator doing weekly science news threads on /pol/ and they're wildly popular. Why not expand that concept to other boards - someone start up the occasional "Ask a /sci/entist" thread or whatever on other boards and people do the best they can to answer people's questions?

>>5769576
Increasing atmospheric pressure on the planet to a sufficient level that you could get away with wearing a thermally insulated suit and a breathing apparatus instead of a fully-pressurized suit.
~100 years

Increasing mean surface temperature to a sufficient level that you could get away with just the breathing apparatus.
~100 years

A fully breathable atmosphere like Earth's
~1000 years.


The first two problems with Mars' climate (lack of atmosphere, too cold) aren't hard to solve... relatively speaking. Seed the planet with dark algae and lichens engineered to survive in the Martian environment and you'll darken the planet's albedo enough to start increasing temperatures and releasing CO2 to trigger a greenhouse effect. Once the majority of CO2 is released you'll have a surface pressure on par with very high altitudes on Earth.

The big problem is the lack of a buffer gas, a nice neutral molecule like Nitrogen or Argon to make up the majority of the air. Mars doesn't have one and it doesn't really have any sources that could produce any in sufficient quantities. You'd have to import it from other sources - comets, other moons or planets... and that kind of effort is centuries beyond what we're capable of doing.


In all likelihood colonization of Mars will be limited (at least for the first few centuries) to pressurized habitats either underground or built into large canyons and craters.

1. Capture some other bugs like some spiders and wasps and centipedes and shit.
2. Manufacture some PCP
3. Dose them and force them to engage in gladiatorial combat.

Are good writing skills beneficial to a mathematician or scientist?

Either
a) wormholes contradict preservation of energy and thus cannot exist
b) the power source supplied to the wormholes gives the object enough energy to get a higher potential in the gravity field. In that case the ball keeps falling and the ball keeps accelerating. Relativity applies, ball gets heavier by Lorentz factor. Never reaches terminal velocity, never reaches light speed.

Unlikely OP, certainly not in the next 100 years.

However, the path that lies before us is no less thrilling. As an increasing number of nations start their own space programs and as the new commercial spaceflight sector drives down the cost of spaceflight a new space race will begin - not with the goal of planting flags and putting boots on the ground, but to become one of the ever increasing number of nations and enterprises that will lay claim to the vast wealth of natural resources throughout our solar system.

The mining of rare metals and minerals throughout the inner solar system will be the competitive driving force of space exploration in the 21st century. What international trade did for the development of naval technology in the 1700s, interplanetary resource mining will do for space travel.

The problem with present day racial divisions is that they're largely based on pre-existing classifications dating back hundreds of years rather than on an impartial, objective comparison of genomes.

Or to put it simply - rather than looking at the genomes of a large group of people, seeing they're similar and saying "these people are all in group A", instead we say "these people are all in existing group B, therefore this is the group B genome".

0/0=

>>5241596

OP, all lines of inquiry must logically have one of two possible outcomes:

One: Eventually, as we pursue the most basic answer to a question, we will get to that most basic answer. The catch here is we won't know when we're there. In this case, we might ask "why" in search of an even more basic mechanism to explain this observation, but at a certain point it must be a moot point. If we've actually hit the most basic answer already, it "just is" that way, we can go no deeper.

Two: The daisy chain of never ending questions goes on forever, and we never get to the most basic answer, because there isn't one any more than there is a list digit of Pi.

I tend to favor the former scenario. I guess the latter might be possible in an infinite Multiverse. I frankly doubt it.

What's the algorithm for winning the "toothpick game"? The rules are two players alternately take 1-3 toothpicks from a pile that initially has 11. The goal is to leave the other player with the last toothpick.

>>5067063
You're surely familiar with the twin paradox?
One twin, Abby, stays on Earth and the other, Betty, sets off at some high percentage of the speed of light.
Let's say that after 50 years, from Betty's perspective Abby has only aged 1 year. At that point Abby hops into her ultraluminal Star Trek ship and catches up with Betty in a negligible amount of time.
These two people were once in identical positions and timeframes, and now once again they are in the same position but 49 years apart.
Worse still, consider this situation from Abby's point of view:
Betty has been traveling away at some high portion of the speed of light, and after a year she seems only to have aged 1/5 of that (relativity applies equally in both frames */dilating time in the same direction/*). So she hops in her magic reality-crushing ship and catches up with her twin, who is now several months younger than her.

Wait, what? Which perspective is correct? Betty or Abby? Who is older? WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?

Instant travel breaks shit.
>Third post's a charm

You're surely familiar with the twin paradox?
One twin, Abby, stays on Earth and the other, Betty, sets off at some high percentage of the speed of light.
Let's say that after 50 years, from Betty's perspective Abby has only aged 1 year. At that point Abby hops into her ultraluminal Star Trek ship and catches up with Betty in a negligible amount of time.
These two people were once in identical positions and timeframes, and now once again they are in the same position but 49 years apart.
Worse still, consider this situation from Abby's point of view:
Betty has been traveling away at some high portion of the speed of light, and after a year she seems only to have aged 1/10 of that (relativity applies equally in both frames */dilating time in the same direction/*). So she hops in her magic reality-crushing ship and catches up with her twin, who is now several months younger than her.

Wait, what? Which perspective is correct? Betty or Abby? Who is older? WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?

Instant travel breaks shit.

>>4965474
>Except for the fact that he gave Congress the okay to butcher the NASA
And when exactly did he do that? Was it when he and Bolden spent the better part of a fucking year pushing for a new, overhauled tech development program, a grander commercial partnership plan, scrapping a budgetary black hole, and one of the largest long-term increases in the agency's funding in decades?

The Administration gave it their best shot and was ultimately forced to compromise in order to get NASA a budget at all. Since then Obama and Bolden have kept fighting tooth and nail to hold on to as much as possible. They fought the plans to shut down the James Webb and they fought the plans to end CCDev.

I'll take "try our damnedest" over "fuck it let's just shut the whole thing down".

>>4939067
A reboot is being produced by NDT and Ann Druyan (Sagan's widow) for 2013. Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy, American Dad) is helping bankroll the project and even cashed in most of the favors he's earned over the years with FOX to secure a prime time slot for the new science and astronomy program.

That's right

Cosmos
Hosted by NDT
On one of the largest broadcast networks in the world
On motherfucking PRIMETIME!

Don't give up.

Working your way through a STEM degree is not easy. But if you keep trying, give it your best effort, and see it through - it IS worth it.

So does reading books really make you more intelligent? Even books that are fiction?

/lit/ got my curiosity when I try to go to /fit/ and accidentally click /lit/ instead and wondering where the fuck I am lol

Finished my first year of grad school and I still don't know.

My two cents OP, don't worry about locking yourself into a specific focus. Take courses on a variety of topics, do research with different faculty, try different things and you'll eventually find the one that clicks or find that you like a lot of stuff.